Happy World Environment Day!
You probably don’t need us to tell you that food waste a big problem. In the UK alone we generate around 19 million tons of greenhouse gases each year through avoidable food waste. And yet, while we’re chucking out vast quantities of perfectly good grub, more people than ever are relying on food banks to get by. It doesn’t take a genius to see that something is wrong.
Of course, a lot of the problem lies in the supply chain, from farming processes through to supermarket practices. Thankfully, due to a lot of public pressure, there is some good news. Supermarkets are pledging to cut their food waste and give leftovers to charities. We question how effective this will be, and how committed companies are, but it seems like a good start. We would encourage you to keep up the pressure by signing petitions and writing to you favourite food brands, supermarkets and local shops asking them to mitigate their food waste, both in store and at the farms who supply them.
As with most of our eco challenges for this year we’re focusing on our own personal consumption. We were shocked to find out that 50% of food waste in the developed world happens in the home. So throughout March we decided to try a Zero Food Waste Month. We set ourselves a target not to throw a single bit of food in the bin. We REALLY like eating, so this was probably less of a sacrifice than our previous challenges.
To achieve our goal of zero food waste we adopted a three-pronged approach:
Know your fridge
We don’t have the stats, but we imagine that most household food waste comes from those manky cucumbers lurking in the bowels of veg drawers all over the UK. If you want to eliminate food waste you’ve got to plan ahead – think about how much you really need to buy, when you need to eat it all, and develop an awareness of what you’ve got in stock. We’ve had some slightly odd combos of veg with our meals just to use up stuff that was going off. Just bung it in, it’s all food right?
That said, eating a giant mound of veg just because it’s on the turn is not really solving the food waste problem, because it’s still encouraging over-production. That’s where some meal planning and clever shopping comes in to make for efficient consumption. We got quicker at this as the month went on and felt the time spent planning was well worth it – both for our bank account and the environment. Also, NEVER go food shopping when you’re hungry. You’ll certainly buy things you don’t need. All of them.
Use every morsel
As well as using everything up before it spoils, try to get the most out of each item. Potato skin, broccoli stalks and beetroot leaves are all edible and nutritious. And as we mentioned in last month’s water blog, we use leftover water from boiling veg to make tasty, vitamin-packed gravy. All of the odds and ends you would normally throw away like onion skin, the bottom ends of stalks, pepper seeds etc. can be saved up each week and boiled for 15 minutes to make a rich veg stock. And it turns out that the leftover water from chickpeas, other pulses and tofu can make a great egg-replacement (Google ‘aquafaba’) for vegan cakes, mayonnaise etc. On that note, we’ve stuck with our vegan diet at home since we started it in January (hence all the vegetable talk) but if you’re a meat eater then make the most of those carcasses by boiling up a hearty broth or soup.
It might all feel a bit like post-war rationing, but there’s a certain sense of fun in trying to squeeze as much goodness out of your food as possible. J is the main cook at home and he found it really enjoyable. And, we must say, there’s a little feeling of smugness when you know you’ve saved waste, energy and money all at the same time.
Feed the world (and the worms)
Finally, if you can’t eat it or boil it, try to get rid of it in the most beneficial way possible. We support our local food bank at The Hope Centre in Derby. Most of what they give away is long-life tinned or packaged goods, but they have a counter for fresh produce too. Olio is a great app for finding free food and sharing your leftovers with others. Or failing that, you could always go old-school and offer food to your neighbours.
Sometimes food is just inedible though, whether it’s gone bad or it’s the bits you can’t use like fruit peel (although with a bit of googling you can find uses for almost anything). We’ve started making compost in our new wormery. Not only does the food decompose like in a usual composer, but you get the spectacular natural fertilizer that is worm wee! OK, it’s not technically wee. But it sounds more fun than ‘worm castings’. We love our new wormy additions to the family and C has named them all Gary. If you don’t like the idea of worms, a regular compost bin will do just fine.
So, how did we find it?
Ease: 3/5 – Bins are just too convenient. But with a bit of forward-thinking we were able to drastically reduce our food waste. It’s just another good habit that we’re trying to build into our life.
Time: 3/5 – Naturally it takes a bit longer to prepare food this way.
Cost saving: 4/5 – If the average UK family throws away 22% of their average weekly shop then there could be huge savings to be made from efficient eating. Just by making more of an effort we managed not to throw away any of our usual veg box, and it saved us having to top it up with stuff from the supermarket.
Health benefits: 3/5 – Lots of the nutrients in vegetables lie in the bits that often get thrown away. We can’t say we felt a difference to our general health, but it can’t have done us any harm! Long term, imagine if nothing was wasted and farmers had a third less food to produce. The extra land could be used to grow crops without pesticides, which may increase the risk of cancer and other diseases.
Impact: 5/5 – Food waste in the home is one of the biggest environmental problems going, and it’s something we can clearly help to tackle by doing our bit.
For the whole month we managed to achieve 100% zero food waste! Hurrah! However, in the month that followed our little wormies weren’t able to keep up with the sheer amount of fruit skins we were throwing their way and we had to start putting banana skins in the general waste bin. Our plan is to start a regular compost bin too, and then give the resulting compost away to friends and family as it’s not much use in our little, urban garden.
As with all of our challenges, perfection is very difficult to achieve (impossible in some cases). Don’t be too hard on yourself if you let a couple of apples go soft, just make a firm resolution to do better next time!
If you want to delve deeper, here’s a good list with lots of practical ways to cut your food waste.
Love food, hate waste.
J+C
P.S. Image by Katherine Chase on Unsplash
Adventures in Eco 